Disdainfully clicking her heels, Alya went out to smoke. Twisting up her unattractive face, taking a deep drag, she stood to us half-turned, so I could see her and understand what she thought of me. Vadik came out after her, cheerful for some reason. He also lit up, to keep Alya company. He smokes one cigarette a night — right at this time, at five in the morning, when the sun is coming up.
What a sour sunrise it was today. It was swill, not a sunrise.
The Muscovites were almost the last to leave. Devoid of emotions, with an empty head, I waited for the tall guy to stop again and say something to me, but hiccupping loudly, he was talking with the driver, and walked past me as if I no longer existed.
The poser followed him, and stopped in the foyer to put on his coat. I watched him waving it around, bathing us in the stench of barely perceptible rot. The poser was in a hurry, and wanted to say something to the Moscow guests, but he was too late, and they drove off, stepping on the gas and brazenly honking at everyone who was wandering in the road.
The poser went outside. When Vadik saw him, he dived back into the club, but got a chubby hand on his backside. The poser grinned happily at Vadik’s vanishing back, and when he saw us he loudly gathered a mouthful of saliva and spat, hitting the glass door. The thick yellow spit, like a crushed and chewed mollusk, ran down the glass.
I jumped off the stool, and it fell down, crashing behind me.
The poser hurried down the steps.
He hailed a taxi, waving his arm. …He doesn’t want to drive his own car, he’s drunk… I realized. The taxi drove towards him — but I got to him first.
Turning the poser around by his shoulder, I did something that I never allowed myself to do to the club patrons — I punched him in the face, in the jaw, with a good, solid blow. I caught him by the coat, not letting him fall. I grabbed him by the hair, which was oily and slippery, straightened his head up and punched him again, aiming for his teeth.
I let the poser go, and he fell down face forwards, dripping blood, spit and something else.
“He’s not going anywhere,” I said to the taxi driver in an even voice. The taxi driver nodded and drove off.
Molotok, with a red face, kicked the poser in the ribs with his heavy boot. He jolted from the blow. Coughing, he got on all fours and tried to crawl away. I stepped on his coat.
“Don’t go away,” I said to him.
Molotok kicked him again — in the stomach, and I thought I saw something fall out of his mouth.
His arms weakened, he couldn’t stay on all fours, and he fell face down, with his chin in the pond, blowing red bubbles which kept bursting.
I squatted down next to him, grabbed a firm hold of the hair on the back of his head, and several times, seven I think, I smashed his head, his face, his nose, his lips, against the asphalt. I wiped my hand on his coat, but it still remained dirty, slimy and disgusting.
Only then did I notice that the foreign car… with those teenagers in it… was still there. They were watching us from behind the glass.
Looking around, I found a rock. They realized what I was looking for, and they rapidly turned the car around, its brakes squealing.
“Get the fuck out of here!” I shouted, throwing the rock, but it didn’t reach them.
Molotok also found a rock, but it was too late to throw it. Rocking the stone in his hand, he threw it into the grass by the roadside.
“Bye, Syoma,” I said almost inaudibly.
“Yes, let’s,” he replied hoarsely.
At home, my wife was sitting in the kitchen.
“I’m very tired,” she said, not turning around.
Taking off my boots, tearing them off, as they were stuck, I looked at the back of my wife’s head.
The child in our room began to cry.
“Could you go to him?” she asked.
I went into the bathroom, and turned on a jet of cold, almost icy water. I put my hands under it.
“Could you?” she asked again.
I stubbornly rubbed my wrists, palms and fingers with soap, so that the soap got under my clipped nails. I put my hands under the water yet again and looked at what was pouring off them.
The child cried in the room alone.
There won’t be anything
Two sons are growing up.
One of them is four months old. He wakes up at night; he doesn’t cry, no. He lies on his stomach, supports himself on his elbows, raises his white-domed little head and breathes. In short, fast breaths, like a dog following a scent.
I don’t turn the light on.
I listen to him.
“Where are you running to, lad?” I ask hoarsely in the darkness.
He breathes.
His head gets tired, and it hits the mattress of the child’s bed. Oops, there’s the rubber nipple under his face. He understands everything, the wise minnow — he twists his head, takes the nipple between his lips and sucks.
If he gets tired of the nipple, there is a soft noise — it falls out. And he breathes again.
From his breathing, I guess that he has turned his head and is looking into the darkness: I can’t see anything.
…But I want to sleep.
“Ignat, you’re a rascal,” I say sullenly.
He falls silent for a moment and listens: Where do I know that voice from?
My head is heavy like a damp burdock in autumn — nothing sticks to it, except sleep, dragging downward, into sticky mud.
Initially I turned the light on when I was woken up by his breathing — he was happy then. Every night we talked until dawn on the couch. I put my son next to me, and we talk. He grimaces, I laugh, keeping my mouth shut, so as not to scare him. Now I don’t turn on the light, I’m tired.
I don’t even remember the minute when he falls asleep, because I’ve fallen into unconsciousness earlier myself.
At night I wake up once, sometimes twice — in sinful fatherly horror: Where is he? What’s that? I can’t hear him breathing!
But if it’s getting light already, the darkness is fading — I pull the cover from the bed and see him there: his face is like an onion bulb, and he’s quietly snuffling.
I like to kiss him when he wakes up. With my lips I touch his cheeks, filled with the milk of my darling, and I am enraptured.
Lord, how tender he is. Like the flesh of a melon.
And his breath… What is the blooming of the shaggy flowers of spring to me — my son snuffles by my face, radiant as though after Communion.
I raise him up above me — his two cheeks hang down, and his saliva drips onto my chest.
I jiggle him to make him laugh. Do you know how they laugh? Like sheep: Ba-a-a-a.
I throw him up gently, without stretching my arms. He doesn’t laugh. But he twists his head: Aha, this is where I live…
“Bleat like a sheep, Ignatka, come on”! I jiggle him. He doesn’t want to. He’s sick of being shaken, he’s going to get grumpy.
I put the baby on my chest, and his feet kick me in the stomach. He raises himself up on his elbows, and looks at my head. He gets tired of this, and lowers his head: A beard, viewed close up. And interes-ting beard. If I could just figure out how to chew it.
I stroke his warm head. It seems to be covered in soft fat.
I’ll pester the baby and look him over until my darling wakes up in the next room.
We have a large apartment, two spacious rooms with high ceilings are divided by a corridor. In the second room on the lower bunk of a two-level bed, my darling is asleep. I sent her there in the evening so that she would get some sleep. And on the upper bunk is my elder son, five years old, with an angelic nature, and my eyes. His name is Gleb.